With nothing to say for once, I move to Aiden and help him move some of the smaller hunks of stone that cover Bjurstrom’s hood. I suppose it’s his hood. I really have no idea where the rogue steam mech’s engine is, nor how it operates. I’m sure there’s some steam involved, which gets me, again, thinking about Ray Steampunk and how he is a good-for-nothing son of a bitch for letting the Reapers take Rocket.
I get angry again real quick. “He could have stopped them, right then and there.”
Aiden, grunts as he tries to move a slab of rock about the size of a covfefe. “Yeah, he could have. Dolly would have.”
There’s my trigger word again. You’d think I’d grow tired of hearing Dolly’s name and having a gut reaction. At least it has become more of a mixed gut reaction, if there is such a thing. I recall the last time I saw her, just before she locked herself away in Fort Dolly.
Damn.
Tell me that it’s nobody’s fault but my own and I’d agree. It still doesn’t make it sting any less.
“I feel like killing,” I tell Aiden, “and even with Ray Steampunk on our side here … ” I look up at the sky and roll my eyes. “I don’t think he’d let us keep our golden player indicators if I did what I’d like to do.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“I say we go to The Loop and pay Two-Face Tommy a visit. That palooka always has something going on in Devil’s Alley. Hell, he’s probably throwing a party right now. There’ll be dames, Riotous, guns and thugs. A stomp-a-thon.”
Aiden shakes his head. “It sounds fun, but Sophia told me I shouldn’t leave the dive yurt. Hell, I can’t blame you.”
“You’re leaving me here?” Lakshmi asks, her eyes filling with worry. “After what has just happened to my dear Rocket?” She turns the waterworks up a notch. “It’s like you guys … don’t care about me!”
“Maybe she’s right, Quantum, maybe we should just stay here.” Aiden sets down a rock about the size of a nightstand. He wipes his forehead, even though there’s no sweat present. “Rocket is a good guy. He wouldn’t have left you stranded or missing just to go blow off some steam…”
“Hey!”
“Not what I mean,” Aiden assures Lakshmi, “what I’m saying is: Rocket would do something else. He’s loyal. I might not know him as well as you, but I definitely get that vibe from the kid.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that.” I sit down on a stone and kick my legs out in front of me. My health bar flashes, reminding me I could use a top off. I equip my steam pack, item 564, and plug into the port on the other side of my elbow. I don’t remember getting struck by anything, but the fight was so sudden that I might not have been paying enough attention.
An idea comes to me so hard and fast that it nearly knocks me backwards. “Revenge,” I gulp, “Strata knows about what happened to Veenure in the RW and … he’s taken Rocket! He wants revenge!”
~*~
I bite my lip as I look at Aiden. “There’s a lot going on up there that I haven’t told you about.”
“Gee, you think? What’s this about revenge?”
“For starters, Strata and I are supposed to meet tomorrow. I dunno if I told you that already, but there it is.”
“Easy peasy. Tie a bomb to your chest and end it.” Aiden shrugs. “That’s what I’d do, and it’s not like you’ll die because you’ll be in a Humandroid body.”
“Trust me, it’s crossed my mind, but I don’t think that would be the justice he deserves. He needs to face the consequences of his actions for the people he’s poisoned and misled in the real world,” I grit. “He needs to spend the rest of his life in the slammer, no lethal injection either, just stuck in a cell scratching each day that passes into the cell wall.”
“Why does nobody comfort me?” Lakshmi is on the ground now, her knees pulled to her chest. “What kind of men are you!?”
Aiden looks back at me, considers the question, and continues, “So that’s all you have to tell me, or is there more?”
“There’s more. I was so pumped to log in and get to ass-stomping that I failed to tell you about what happened to Veenure.”
His eyes narrow. “What happened?”
“Doc and I went to arrest her, she bolted, we chased her to her room and she killed herself.”
“Well, good riddance.”
“That’s what I said.”
He paces for a moment his hands behind his back. Finally, he says, “This is definitely revenge then. It didn’t just happen out of the blue. You got Strata by the balls, now he has you. Which is … a strange image to think about.” His eyes twitch. “Real strange. So the question is: what happens next?”
“One, Strata kills Rocket. Two, Strata uses Rocket as bait to coerce us.”
He nods. “Three, Strata kills you in your Humandroid form at your meeting then kills Rocket.”
“Four, Strata enslaves Rocket and turns him into a Reaper. Does something with the kid’s D-NAS too.”
“Five, Strata forces Rocket to be part of his Meridian Circuit and feeds off the kid to strengthen himself.”
“ENOUGH, ENOUGH!” Lakshmi hops to her feet and points her key gun at us. “If I hear one more world about Rudraksh dying, I’m taking both of you out!”
“Easy, sister,” I tell her, “you don’t want it with us. Believe you me.”
She fires a blast into the woods that incinerates two trees. She loads another magical round into the grip on her big-league Victorian key. “I know you have mutant hacks, but I will do my best to fight you!”
Aiden appears behind her with revolver aimed at the back of her head. He cocks the hammer. “Lower your weapon,” he tells her calmly, “this won’t end well for you.”
I put my hands in the air and force a smile at both of them. “Whoa, whoa,” says I, “Everyone cool it. Nobody is killing nobody, and this especially applies to Strata Godsick.” I look up at the sky. “Alrighty, Ray, if you don’t get your ass down here pronto, I am going to spawn in Locus and start murdalizing EVERYONE if you don’t respond. There will be hell to pay!”
A blinding barrage of light at the far end of the crater signals the God Emperor of Steam has finally decided to grace us with his presence. The golden diva man floats out of the portal and moves to a holier-than-thou-looking-down-upon-thee point just a few feet in air, which makes me wonder if he’d be a big fan of Sophia’s Passive Aggression for the Magical Being ebook that she has yet to pen.
He glares down at me with his cold black eyes, and of course, as he speaks his lips don’t actually move. “You called?”
“Holy!!!!!” Lakshmi’s smeared eyeliner corrects itself and she quickly adjusts her hair and her funbags. “It’s … it’s really you!”
Aiden, still standing behind Lakshmi, lowers his weapon. He positions himself to catch her if she faints. Lakshmi has worked herself up into a frenzy by the time Ray’s kingly ass floats over to us. She has a new outfit on, her hair is pinned a different way, her corset is pulled even tighter and her knee-high boots are polished and the heels have grown a few inches longer.
Me? I’m not a fanboy and I’m definitely not a fan of Ray Steampunk. I equip Doc’s Metal Storm bonesaw, item 586. I’m partial to the newest items in my list, not ashamed to admit that, and I am very well aware that my egregious bean shooter won’t do shit to Ray’s ass, but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. “What in the hell is wrong with you, Ray?”
“As you know, I do not like to get involved with the day to day operations in Steam.”
“Ray, you got us chasing our tails in Akrasia trying to get some frickin’ metal and you let the Reapers get away with Rocket! Now they’ve upped the testicular torsion, and you’re just sitting back in your airship watching all this unfold like it’s the latest summer blockbuster. I got news for you, pal, what we’re doing here has real world implications and you’d be stupid as hell to think that letting the Reapers get the Sky Iron won’t be bad for your God-like ass. And another thing – letting them take Rocket
when you could have intervened is just damned dirty. You’re a real piece of work, Ray, and if no one has told you that before, it’s probably because they’re too busy trying to polish your brass knob you stupid son of a bitch!”
Ray’s facial expression remains the same. “Are you finished?”
“Am I finished?” I fire the bone saw at Ray and the bullets slow in front of him and drop to the ground. “Three, you’re a real asshole!”
“I’ve come to discuss strategies with you. Or will you continue to shoot at me?”
I shoot at him once.
“Finished?”
“Yes,” I growl.
“So now that we’ve established you can’t shoot me, let’s begin our conversation. Lakshmi,” he says without looking at Rocket’s girlfriend, “I’m going to need you to log out now. This is a private conversation. I will, however, have an admin keep you updated on Rocket’s situation.”
“But … ” Her hand raises on its own accord and a logout button appears. “Please!” she says as she tries to gain control over her body. No such luck; Ray’s NVA mojo forces her to press the button. She’s gone faster than your perpetually unemployed brother-in-law when the bar bill arrives.
“It was unfortunate that I was unable to prevent them from taking Rocket.”
“Unfortunate!?” I’m beside myself again. Does this pompous asshat really understand how he comes off? I get the urge to fire another shot at Ray but I swallow it down.
“They used a technology to do that – to OMIB-port – something that I haven’t encountered before,” Ray says. “It was incredibly fast, and I believe the tech they are using was made from other RPG metals, an alloy.”
“Any idea where they went?” I ask.
“They took him to a custom OMIB space, the inverse of their storage world.”
“Strata’s storage world? I know the place.”
“You will not be able to spawn in the OMIB of that world without the RPG metal. Sure, you can go to their storage world again, but only a Reality Splitter weapon will be able to cut into the OMIB. The Reality Splitter, if you recall, is the same weapon you needed to free Zedic which you were unable to craft in time to save him.”
“I remember.”
“And it is the weapon you will make when you get the Sky Iron, by alloying it with Chronoton.”
“I don’t need a reminder, Ray, I need a strategy going forward.”
Ray’s form starts to slowly dematerialize. “I just gave you your strategy. One more thing: Do not give in to Strata’s demands. You have Luther’s location – this is the one thing he has torn through the Proxima Galaxy in search of. It is your ultimate trump card.”
“What if … ?” I look to Aiden and gulp. “What if Rocket spills his beans? Then our single trump card is null.”
“I don’t believe he will,” Ray says just before his avatar has completely vanished, “his resolve is much stronger than you think.”
~*~
I awake on the other side of a shit situation. All sorts of shit about Sophia’s hotel room comes to me, but I ignore it.
Damn you, Strata. I can only imagine what Rocket is going through right now as I slowly remove Sophia’s makeshift NV Visor from my noggin.
“So that’s why it is so quiet,” I say after I’ve discovered that Sophia’s bed has been vacated.
I stand, flick off the bright light used to fuel my droid bod’s robosynthesis, and I’m just about to reach the door and head to the Big Euphoria’s room when Chuntao makes her presence known.
“Yeah, I hear you Chuntao, and like I said before, Muffle Trumplings ain’t good for nobody. It sounds like you need to see a gastroenterologist, but that’s just me, maybe your gassiness is a result of how big of an asshole you are.”
“You are a rude and stupid droid, a rotten egg that has fermented inside a trashcan filled with maggots. I did not program myself. Sophia programmed me to do that.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I can’t shit you and you can’t shit you. I’m watching you, droid. There is something very odd about you.”
I give the wireless speaker on the nightstand not one, but two, birds. I hold them there long and good too.
“Human gestures mean nothing to me. I can fry your circuits.”
I grin as a wicked idea comes to me. “You know, Chuntao, that your headmistress has a thing for me, don’t you? She’ll deny it, but both of us know it’s true.”
The bitchy AI makes a spitting sound.
“There’s a good Chuntao; yes, you know then. Well, if you don’t get your act together, I’ll give in to her demands and once I have her in the palm of my hand, I’ll convince her that there are way better AIs, that she can do so much better than you, and I’ll see to it that you’re replaced.”
The AI goes quiet.
“Now that you’ve pushed me to the point of a DisNike villain, Chuntao, watch your ass!”
With that, I slam the door shut and march across the hall to Frances Euphoria’s room. I drum my fingers on the door for a moment, appreciating how natural this feels. I hate to say that I’m starting to get used to my droid body but I am, and about the only thing missing are a bunch of mech anime add-ons that would allow me to both kick ass and take names in a variety of situations.
Frances opens the door, her face a bit puffy from crying.
She wears her heart on her sleeve and I can definitely tell without scanning her vitals that she’s recently experienced something. “Come in,” she says, “Sophia’s here too.”
Yay for my sanity – Sophia is wearing clothing, the Dream Team duds, and she sits on a sofa chair in front of the window. She looks up to me, shakes her head bitterly, and looks back down at the floor.
Time to be a fearless leader.
“Don’t worry,” I assure them, “we’ll get Rocket and we will, I mean this, we will hand the Reapers their asses.”
“But how?” Sophia asks. “He has Rocket!”
“And we have Luther.”
“If you give him Luther’s location, they will destroy Tritania looking for him.”
“No,” I tell her, “we won’t let them. We will fight them and we will enlist our friends to help us.”
“Friends?” Sophia asks. “You’ve alienated Empress Thun’s royal court!”
“There are the giants … ” I recall the Saiduka Giants and their little troll of a leader, King Coromon. “They could be helpful. The Brits too, if they’re not incarcerated. And the Lost Boys.”
“The Reapers will turn all their resources to Tritania,” Frances says, “all of their players and their weapons. If they are able to get the Sky Iron, or any other RPG metals, they could simply threaten to destroy the world if the NVA Seed doesn’t hand Luther over.”
“Why isn’t the Proxima Company involved here?” I ask. “Don’t they care that one of their worlds could potentially be destroyed?”
Another knock at the door. Frances opens it and Doc and Arnie enter. Both are in overalls; Doc has on his CWO trucker hat. Hovering over his shoulder is his B-drone, Von Richtofen.
Arnie is silent as he takes a position near the door.
“Who’s staying, who’s going?” Doc asks. “I need to know, pronto.”
I look to Frances and thankfully, she gets the hint.
“Sophia can go back to Baltimore to take care of Rocket and Quantum’s bodies. I’ll escort Quantum to Denver. Doc?”
“Arnie and I will leave in the next twenty minutes. It’s a thousand miles away, which means I will need to go airborne and you guys know how I feel about traveling in an aeros. That’s why I have this.” He taps on the front of his overalls and my interface zooms, showing the outline of a flask. “Nighty-night, kiddos.”
I start to make a ‘are you going to spawn in Barbie World’ joke but think otherwise – damn does it feel good to finally become a mature, functioning member of society.
“Aiden and I spoke to Ray Steampunk,” I inform the group. “His only advic
e was to use Luther’s location as a trump card.”
Doc nods. “Did he say anything about not stopping the Reapers from taking the kid in the first place?”
“Not much. Only that they were faster than he thought they’d be.”
Doc chews on his lip for a moment. “I don’t think Steampunk knows just how difficult the situation will become if they get the Sky Iron and create a Reality Splitter, or something similar.”
“It’ll be all-out war if they get their hands on the metal and he didn’t even mention Akrasia, or Bjurstrom, or bringing down the walls.”
“Typical Ray. Look, I knew the guy – he’s the type that will sit back and watch the world burn if he thinks that someone else will put the fire out at the very last minute. I guess he sees us as that hope.” Doc sighs.
“So back to the trump card,” I say, “do I use it to get Rocket or not?”
Doc glances at Frances. “What do you think?”
“It will create an all-out war in Tritania that may spill over to other Proxima worlds most notably Steam, that is, until the Reapers get the metal.”
“And we don’t have the metal yet,” Doc says. “Scoping out Tent City with Joel, I think it may be a bit harder than we originally thought. That last wall was heavily guarded. Then again, it may be a walk in the park.”
“So do I use Luther as leverage or not?” I ask them.
“You usually just make those decision on your own,” Sophia says coldly.
Deep breath.
“Yeah, well I’m trying to do this right here, dammit. I’m not letting Rocket face the same fate as Zedic. Hell, I will even trade my body if it means keeping the kid around.”
Doc considers this for a moment. “No, don’t trade your body, not in its current state. I’m serious, give up Luther if you have to, but do not offer your own RW body. That would be suicide, and we can’t guarantee Strata will actually follow through with whatever he says he’s going to do.”
“But giving up Luther’s position may put Tritania on the path to extinction,” Frances says.
“Only if they get the Sky Iron,” Doc reminds us.
“What are the legal ramifications of giving me a gun and letting me kill Strata right then and there?”
Proxima Riven: (Book Seven) (Sci-Fi LitRPG Series) (The Feedback Loop 7) Page 13